Weiss manages the Strong Common Stock and Strong Opportunity funds, which are up 21 percent and 14 percent, respectively, on an annual basis over the past five years.

One reason they've done so well is that Weiss pretty much plays by his own rules.

When everybody else is piling into technology stocks, for example, he'd rather find companies that are undervalued and under followed.

As a result, technology stocks only account for about 15 percent of his fund's portfolios, while they account for more than half of many rival funds. "We're just sticking to our knitting," Weiss says.

That means looking for companies that "will be good in a few years, not just a few weeks."

Weiss values companies on the basis of what they would be worth in a takeover. So far this year about 10 companies in his portfolio have been acquired, "and all were within a point of the private value numbers," he says.

"That helps give us a great deal of comfort in knowing what the downside risk is, and what the upside potential is."

His bottom line, however, is that any company whose stock he owns has to be a "good company," which means it either has some competitive advantage, some franchise value or some attribute that should allow them to gain some value over a period of time.

Such as?

Such as Toys R Us.

He started buying it about five weeks ago when its stock was around 25. "What everybody hates about it is that they had a bad Christmas, because video game sales were bad," Weiss says.

"But everybody took bad video game sales and extrapolated that to the whole company.

"Our analysis of the numbers is that ex-video games, they probably did fine. They had adequate same-store sales. To us, that means the franchise value is OK, plus the concept is transportable to Japan," -- where Toys R Us has stores -- "and there will be a new cycle in video games. As soon as there's any positive news, the stock will be in the 30s, and the company is buying back loads of stock."

Another example: Cox Cable. Weiss has owned cable stocks since 1977, and Cox has been a favorite.

Now he believes Cox is the best posi tioned, as cable companies start competing with local telephone companies -- especially in Southern California, where Cox is the dominant cable company. "They've always been a pioneer in different areas of cable and broadcasting," he says. "And nobody is looking at cable right now."

Why not?

"Because not a lot of people want to risk buying a stock that isn't going to do anything, when you can buy a technology stock that goes up 20 percent in a month. But the wheel will turn, and at some point technology will be so high-priced it won't go up anymore."